Life of Pi

An award winner in Canada, Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Product Description
The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.

The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?

Then you get the joyful opportunity to discover a book like Martel's Life of Pi. This is a story like no other. There is a plot unique, thought provoking and inspiring; a main character who presents a persona so important and so basic to life and an author who writes with such ease and comfort that you think he is speaking with you in your living room over coffee.

Main character Piscine [Pi] is stranded in a life raft with a tiger after a ship wreck. Don't let the seeming trviality of this brief plot review dissuade you. Only an author with the imagination and genius of Martel could make this work. It works so very well. Read this book with an open mind as Martel details his suffering, his thoughts, his feelings, his emotional drain and most importantly his relationship with the tiger. Try hard to understand what Mr. Martel is really talking about and dare to think about how you would react to the situations presented after 200 days at sea in a 26 foot raft.

For every 20 books I read I pray one will be like this. It is one of the few books I have ever read that I think I could read again.


Life of Pi   May 25, 2002
Douglas Jenkins (Honolulu, currently)
75 out of 86 found this review helpful

This is the best new novel I have read in years. It is completely refreshing. In this novel there isn't a hint of cynicism or pessimism. It is horrific and frightening, and yet optimistic in the most moving way. The only part where the sometimes inflated ego that Mr Martel has exhibited in previous books shows through (and I write this with a smile on my face) is when he suggests that the story "will make you believe in God." Don't worry, it will not corrupt you into organized religion, be it Hinduism, Islam or Christianity, nor does it even try. Yet, perhaps the key to the fascinating affect that this beautiful and horrifying work has is this rare (even unique!) underlying spirituality. It is a book of symbols, which you at first believe are quite simple, slowly developing (like an avalanche) into complexity. And yet when the story is over it becomes clear in a shocking instant that, all along, the symbols were even more simple and meaningful (in the most realistic sense) than you could have ever imagined. I was mesmerized by this book and could not put it down.


Rudyard Kipling Would be Proud   November 25, 2002
Chris (New York, NY)
42 out of 47 found this review helpful

It took me three weeks to finally find this book. It flew off the shelves like hot cakes once it won the Man Booker Prize in England. However, once I got my hands on a copy, I read it from cover to cover. From the very beginning, Martel is able to enticingly draw the reader into a world that most of us in the western world have never seen before. His travels in India are apparent in the detail he uses when describing Pi's hometown of Pondicherry, and his talent for developing the main characters is done very well in my opinion, delivering enough detail to make it extremely authentic, but not overpowering the reader at the same time. Martel's style is simultaneously powerful, confident, and unassuming.

The "meaty" part of the book is used to describe Pi's incredible (and harrowing) journey across the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with a tiger. Don't let the description fool you. This book isn't sweet and cuddly; as is apparent by Martel's description of Richard Parker and his various companions on the lifeboat. This journey is one of life and death.

I've never read anything quite like "Life of Pi", apart from Kipling. This is on the same level in it's fableistic qualities. Instantly a classic in my opinion, it won't ever be outdated. This is the type of book that could be read a hundred years from now and still be great. 5 STARS!!!


Amazing and symbolic - I loved this book   May 31, 2002
Booknut (St. Albert, AB)
108 out of 129 found this review helpful

I read between 50 and 80 books a year and it is the rare novel that does not disappoint me on some level. This book never let me down, I was never bored and I never felt the author cheated or left loose ends. The language was simple and lyrical but full of symbolism and symmetry. I loved the main character's honesty and optimism and his simple will to survive. Above all I loved the choice of an alternate ending, neither story is a perfect fit leaving the reader the choice to make up their own mind. I laughed, I cried and I'm recommending it to everyone I know.